Poker is Dangerous
by Rialga
Summary: Dante goes to one of his favorite bars and ends up meeting Allen Walker. Impressed by his poker skills, he challenges him to a few hands. A horrible mistake on Dante's part.


Just re-watched Allen beating Tyki Mikk and his buddies in poker and it ended up inspiring this one-shot. Not until watching that clip had I realized how obvious it was to do this fic, but hey better late than never, right?

Well, as you read, you will find that this fic takes place way after D. Gray Man and after the Devil May Cry anime, but before Devil May Cry 4.

It's been a while since I ever put a disclaimer, but I will for this: I don't own Devil May Cry or D. Gray Man, otherwise I would have made this fic happen just to see how it would turn out.

Here it is. Hope you enjoy.

Poker is Dangerous

Allen Walker sighed happily, content at having gotten some coffee to drink. He had been wandering around this city for the past few days, exploring the sites, but he had yet to encounter a place that made good coffee until now. He took a sip of it and let out another sigh.

The coffee provided him with a measure of contentment that he hadn't felt in a long time. Many years ago, when the Millenium Earl and the Noah had threatened the world, he and his fellow exorcists had gone up against them. However, near the end of the conflict, Allen transformed into a Noah, an event that actually gave a much needed edge against the Earl. He had won, the Earl was defeated and so were the Noah, but as he was one himself, he had effectively become immortal, as far as being unable to age anyway.

Allen's face fell a bit as he remembered how time had past, how he had watched everyone and everything around him grow old and wither while he still remained the same. He eventually left the Black Order as it came to an end. At least all of the exorcists died knowing that the world was at peace, the threat of the Earl gone.

Allen himself felt good knowing that he had been able to prevent the whole world from suffering at the hands of the Earl and this thought was able to lift his spirits up enough to take another sip of coffee and enjoy it. He was surprised at how good it was.

The city he was currently in was a nice enough place, but the part of the city he was in didn't exactly look too inviting. He sat in a dark, almost gloomy bar that was clean enough, but it was obvious to those with a good eye that the maintenance of the drinks were of more importance to the owner than the bar's cleanliness. When Allen had first arrived and asked for a coffee, the bartender had nearly scoffed at him as if he had never heard of such a thing. Much to Allen's surprise though, the guy actually did give him a coffee and his opinion of the place changed a bit.

Having found a little table to sit at, Allen found himself pulling out his deck of cards and doing little tricks with them. It was a little habit of his that he had developed over the many years he's been around. As there were no akuma left to fight, all of them having perished along with the Earl, Allen was forced to come up with means to keep himself entertained and he found it in cards. Be it poker or black jack or any other form of gambling, Allen had taken to it quickly, his already terrifying gambling skills being honed beyond what they already were. Gambling was really the only thing around that Allen was not only good at, but also enjoyed and it wasn't long before he made a bit of a name for himself amongst gamblers, who referred to him as the Clown as he seemed innocent enough, but under that facade lied a fearsome persona of his that Allen remembered Lavi calling Dark Allen due to how evil and tricky he can be when gambling.

Allen took another sip of his coffee and started placing some of his cards on the table, looking them over for what had to be the millionth time he has done so since getting them. He always made sure to keep the cards in mint condition. He started off with a four of spades and then placed random cards on top of it such as a king of diamonds, a queen of hearts, and so on until soon enough, he placed every card on top, the last one being the joker. "Good, they're not bent," Allen said to himself as he began to pick the cards back up to put away.

However, he stopped as he heard a tap on his table. Looking up, he saw that one of the patrons of the place had come up to him. The man was tall and lanky, with a huge shot glass of beer in his hand. "Hey there, kid. Saw those cards of yours and was interested. Where did you get those at?" he asked.

"Ah, they're just something that I've had for some time now," Allen answered, putting on a kind smile.

The man chuckled a bit, taking a seat across from Allen. "Hey, think we could play a few hands. I haven't played poker in a while and besides, I think you should do more with those cards than just look at them."

Allen's smile nearly doubled in size. "Sure. Would you like to do the honors of shuffling?"

The man nodded and Allen handed him his deck. As the man began to shuffle, he couldn't help but think of how young Allen looked and figured him to be just some runaway kid looking for some way to leave his mark somewhere. He certainly looked the part with those rather shabby clothes of his. However, had the man not been so busy focusing on shuffling the cards, he would've seen an unnerving gleam in Allen's eyes.

He finished shuffling and placed the deck right in front of him. "So kid, you ready?" he asked, confident that he'd win.

The smile on Allen's face caused his confidence to falter a bit though. "Whenever you're ready," Allen said. The man began to deal out the card, unaware of what he was about to put himself through.

Awhile later, Dante was walking down the street to one of his favorite bars. He was in a good mood, having been able to get payed for his most recent job despite having caused a bit more than his fair share of collateral damage. And Lady had yet to show up like the money vulture that she is and take her share of his money. And best of all, Patty wasn't around to nag his ear off for causing so much damage to the surrounding buildings in the first place. She may have grown on him and she had actually gotten a lot nicer towards him after the whole incident with Abigail, but the girl still knew how to grate his nerves every now and then.

"Well it isn't happening today," Dante muttered to himself happily. He could already imagine himself buying a few beers right now. Turning a corner, he found himself looking at the bar and smiled as he advanced closer and closer. However, as soon as he reached the door, he knew something was off. Normally when he came, the place was quite lively, some guys getting into an argument or a fist fight or just simply talking, but now there wasn't a single sound coming from the place.

Dante wished that a demon hasn't somehow made its way here; he'd hate to have to pay the bar manager most of his hard earned cash for messing up the place if there was a demon and he and it fought it out for a minute or two.

Dante slowly opened the door and was pleasantly surprised to see that everything was more or less fine. The only thing odd was that everyone was quiet and seemed to be staring somewhere off to the corner at the back of the whole room.

Following their gazes, he saw a young man with snow white hair and a grin plastered on his face playing poker with three men, none of whom looked too happy. In fact, they looked ready to kill the guy. Dante only had to look at all the money on the man's side of the table to know why the three would be looking so positively murderous.

Chuckling, he made his way over to the table, the occupants of the bar finally noticing him. He stopped right next to the young man - Allen - and sized him up as he and the three men he was playing against stopped what they were doing.

"May I help you?" Allen asked as he looked Dante in the eyes.

Dante didn't answer right away, merely looking at the pile of money by his arms. A small smile appeared on his face as he suddenly thought of a way to take that money for himself: beat the guy at his own game.

"I see you're pretty good at poker, kid. Mind if I play a few hands with you?" Dante asked him.

Allen smiled and gestured for Dante to sit down. The three men took this as their cue to leave, forgetting all about their money as they began to fear Dante getting pissed off and ending up as an outlet for him. They were certain he'd snap eventually when he starts losing against Allen. They weren't that far off with their assumption.

Allen gathered up all of the cards and started shuffling them, impressing Dante a bit at how fast he was doing it. "Not too bad, kid. Looks like you've been at this for a while."

"Thank you, I always practice. And my name isn't kid, it's Allen. What's your name?" Allen stated.

Dante just grinned. "Name's Dante. Hope you're ready to lose, kid." So confident he was in winning that Dante didn't notice the gleam in Allen's eyes. Dante, having only walked in barely a minute ago, didn't see how badly Allen was winning against those guys. If he had, he wouldn't have felt so confident in his poker skills.

"Can't be that good. At least, he can't be as good as Patty," Dante thought with a bit of a shiver. That girl sure was damn lucky at poker, so much so that it was ridiculous. But after getting a good look at Allen before him, Dante concluded that the guy's luck wasn't that great if his appearance is anything to judge by. He would soon come to regret that as Allen began to deal out the cards, Dante not noticing a few cards slip out of Allen's sleeves into his hand.

Dante picked up his cards and inwardly smirked at what he had: two pairs. "I'm feeling good today kid, so I'll throw you a bit of a bone here," he said as he pulled out a small sack of bills and threw them onto the table.

Allen just smiled, making Dante think that he was going to win their first hand. Alas, it was not to be. "Call," Allen started, taking Dante by surprise a bit; he wasn't expecting Allen to reveal his hand so damn soon. "A royal flush."

Dante's eyes went wide. How the hell did Allen manage to get such a good hand from the get go? What were the odds of that happening? These were only two of several questions going through his mind now as he looked at his hand and with a bit of grumbling, folded.

"Alright, get that grin off of your face, kid. This is party is just getting started," Dante growled out at the amused expression Allen had.

"Whatever you say, Dante," Allen casually replied. It was obvious that he was messing with the devil hunter.

"Just deal the cards." Dante's mood has now officially gone from good to bad and he prayed that the next hand would help cheer him up a bit. He watched Allen's hands as he shuffled, knowing for a fact that he couldn't be that lucky; he had to be cheating and that was something Dante planned to catch him at. However, Allen had spent many years honing his card skills to new heights, increasing his shuffling speed to a point that even Dante had to grudgingly admit that he couldn't keep up with the cards in Allen's hands. If he were able to, he'd see a few cards actually slide down Allen's sleeve while a few more would come out to replace them when Allen was flipping the cards from one hand to the other.

Allen dealt out the cards and so their second hand began. This time around, Dante only bet a few dollars instead of several twenty dollar bills like before, but after a few minutes passed of just staring at each other, both of them put down their cards. Dante's eyes widened again as he saw that Allen had yet another royal flush while this time he had three of a kind.

Dante hissed as Allen casually took the bills on the table. "Thank you for this. I could use a good evening meal later," Allen taunted.

"Okay this time, I deal the cards, kid," Dante said. Allen shrugged, handing over the deck to him. He watched lazily as Dante began to shuffle, noting that while he could do the task better than normal people, it still wasn't much compared to him.

"Alright, now let's try this," Dante said, feeling much more confident. He felt that he had reason to be so as he had shuffled the deck so that when he dealt Allen his cards, they were all completely random, ensuring that he doesn't get any sort of hand to use against him. He snickered; looks like all those times Patty beat him were paying off a bit.

allen smiled, which infuriated Dante, but he didn't let it get to him. After the cards were dealt, Dante put some more money on the table to wager. "Alright kid, let's see you pull that crap again." He placed his cards down. Some of the guys in the bar, at least those closest to see, looked: a full house. Some of them began to whisper a little excitedly, thinking that maybe Dante could win all of their money back.

Unfortunately for them, Allen's skill was far greater than anything they could imagine and so they were rather overcome with shock and despair when Allen revealed his hand: a straight flush. Dante has never looked so angry before and the guys watching have never been so crushed; they had pretty much placed their hopes in Dante and it seemed that it simply wasn't enough.

Dante didn't say a single word and shoved the money on the table towards Allen. Picking up the cards, Dante began to shuffle again and again, pointing out to Allen that from now on he would be dealing the cards, something that the former exorcist had no objection to.

Every hand they would play, Dante would deal the cards, but Allen would always win, slipping in cards of his own to replace others. More and more time passed on and in the process, Dante ended up losing more of his money. It wasn't very long until Dante suddenly burst into uncontrollable laughter.

Allen seemed a bit taken aback by this, fearing that perhaps he had pushed him too far even though Dante could've backed out whenever he wanted. The men in the bar, on the other hand, had lived in the area long enough to know how Dante's personality works and right now, they knew that the devil hunter was just about ready to pull out his sword and rip Allen a new one. They all took this moment to back away.

They did the right thing for as soon as they were a good distance away, Dante practically roared, pulling his sword, Rebellion, right off his back and swinging it at Allen. Allen yelped, completely taken by surprise. He jumped back, narrowly avoiding the massive blade as he somehow managed to grab hold of his cards and the money.

"Uh, Dante? M-Mr. Dante?" Allen said, feeling more than a bit unsettled by the look in Dante's eyes. He took a few steps back as Dante kicked the table away, Allen watching it fly towards the wall along with the chairs.

"My damned money... my damned money," Dante muttered, eyeing Allen.

Allen took a step towards the door. "Now, now, can't we talk this out? I can give you your money back too, you know."

Reasoning seemed to be beyond Dante right now and it was a bit understandable why: he's been having to pay Lady back for months now and today was the one day that he has had without her damn near stalking him for his cash and he ended up losing his payment anyway. To someone as young as Allen no less and that felt as bad as losing to Patty. Hell, he'd rather be playing with Patty now; at least she didn't do crap like this to him.

Without any further ado, Dante lunged right at Allen, but Allen was able to run right outside before Dante could make contact. However, Dante had a feeling that he would have been able to dodge it and so was able to land on his feet and leap outside the doorway, in hot pursuit of Allen. Allen leapt to the top of the nearest building and began to sprint away like a madman. Dante was no slouch himself in the maneuverability department either and followed Allen's lead.

Pulling out his guns, he took aim at Allen and fired. Allen sensed the action and transformed his arm into his Sword of Exorcism and deflected the bullets into the building roof before putting on a sudden burst of speed. Dante was certainly surprised by this, thinking for a brief second that Allen could be a demon, but he quickly got rid of this notion as Allen didn't act as a demon or carry the same sort of aura that a demon has. That didn't change the fact that he was way worst than a demon; his skill with cards possibly made him worse than Mundus, at least that is what Dante thought.

Dante leapt high into the air and performed his Helm Breaker. His prey noticed his shadow and raised his own sword to try and block the incoming attack. Allen proved successful in this, but only barely as Dante proved to be much stronger than him. He had planned to kick Dante away when said man whipped out one of his guns and fired at close range. Allen tilted his head to avoid the shots only to receive a sudden kick from Dante. Allen gasped for air as he tumbled off the building, but he made sure to go down with a bit of a bang.

Concentrating hard, he began to form his Death Ball attack, taking care to make this a weak one as he didn't want to cause too much damage to the area. Dante saw it coming and immediately began to move out of the way, but Allen finished charging the attack faster than he anticipated and the Death Ball shot right by him. Dante didn't expect it to explode right then and there.

The explosion knocked him into a building, making a rather deep imprint in the wall. Dante grunted a bit from the pain and raised his arms to cover his face from the dust and debris that flew about as the explosion took out a decent portion of the building they had been on.

After the dust settled and he got himself off the wall, Dante looked around and saw that Allen was nowhere in sight. He had gotten away. Dante growled, unable to believe that he had just lost the guy, but then let out a sigh as he knew that if the guy was as good at running as he is at poker, he had no chance of catching him. "I'm gonna rip that guy a new one if I see him again though," Dante grumbled as he walked off before the cops show up. The last thing he needed was to be hassled for collateral damage... again.

Unbeknownst to him, Allen was close by still. There was a nearby manhole that Allen was able to slip under before it was covered by the debris, thus saving Allen the trouble of thinking what else could be done to give Dante the slip. He sighed, relieved that he was able to get away with such little damage. "Maybe not so little," he thought, rubbing his chest. That kick did quite a number on his sternum, but thankfully nothing appeared to be broken.

But this little encounter with Dante had taught Allen one thing. "Poker is dangerous," he muttered. He may love to gamble and to win at it, but it wasn't worth his own life. Walking alongside the sewer wall, he made sure that his clothes, cards, and money were still intact. Everything being okay, he picked up his pace; he didn't want to have a repeat of today anytime soon.

End

Alright, finally done! As I've never played poker before, I don't entirely know how the hands work, only going by what I've heard and have read about, but I don't know if the rules have changed or anything. If anything I typed regarding poker is inaccurate, please let me know so that if I involve it in another fic, I'll know better.

Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it.

Please be sure to leave a review too!


End file.
